backup Video-DVD works on dvd-rw but not an dvd-r

I had the same problem & it came down to media. Which RW & R media are you using? As far as R-RW difference (from the desktop player point of view) is mainly in reflectivity. RW is less reflective and has the reflectivity similar to DVD9 (dual layer disks) what sometimes confuses older desktop players, and usually results in many of them not playing RW while having no problems with Rs (what is not your case). On the other hand more reflective R disks can saturate some players and generate more read errors. If disk is recorded with questionable media (sometimes even some good ones) that already introduces high PI/PO error count this can render them unreadable on some, but perfectly fine on other players. That results in a trial & error process that everybody here recommends. Try multiplicity of media (both R & RW) and test what are the most suitable brands for your burners/players combinations.

thanks for the reply, but the problem definately has nothing to do with playback comptibility of media. I am only using media that has worked well hundreds of times (Ritek G03 or Data Track) on a player that reads everything Pioneer DV525. The problem is not the typical blocky or jerking playback one encounters with bad media but wrong connections out ofmenues eg vts sector adressing I suppose. So it must be caused by how the data is written to -r and -rw. There must be a difference!!! digisei

What is the RW media? Which burner, what speed G03 were burned @ and was it a new batch of G03s?

the rw media was Pioneer V1.1 - almost worth a fortune when I bought it... I always burn at 1x on Pinoeer 104 to get best results! What do you mean by what generation G03? I recently bought it under brand name PrimeDisk which is the German distributor for Ritek. A friend checked those with his LG-drive and they have good error rates!

Are you closing the session when burning to DVD-R?

Concerning this matter I have another problem; I can burn a movie backup to a DVD+RW and when I try to burn a DVD-r I get an error on burning. I have a Sony DR500-A and use Nero 5.10.28 to burn. The media of +RW is HP and -R is MMORE. I had burnt two MMORE DVD-R from different sources. Any idea?